Folle Farine Part 80

"Pooh! do you not know yet? A female thing, as beautiful as you are, makes hers everything she looks upon?"

"That is a fine phrase."

"And an empty one, you think. On my soul! no. Everything you see here is yours, if it please you."

She looked at him with dreaming perplexed eyes.

"What do you want of me?" she said, suddenly.

"Nay--why ask? All men are glad to give to women with such a face as yours."

She laughed a little; with the warmth, the rest, the wonder, the vague sense of some unknown danger, her old skill and courage rose. She knew that she had promised to be grateful always to this man: otherwise,--oh, G.o.d!--how she could have hated him, she thought!

"Why?" she answered, "why? Oh, only this: when I bought a measure of pears for Flamma in the market-place, the seller of them would sometimes pick me out a big yellow bon-chretien, soft as b.u.t.ter, sweet as sugar, and offer it to me for myself. Well, when he did that, I always knew that the weight was short, or the fruit rotten. This is a wonderful pear you would give me; but is your measure false?"

He looked at her with a curious wonder and admiration; he was angered, humbled, incensed, and allured, and yet he was glad; she looked so handsome thus with the curl on her quiet lips, and her spirited head fit for a bronze cast of Atalanta.

He was an old man; he could bear to pause and rightly appreciate the charm of scorn, the spur of irony, the good of hatred. He knew the full value of its sharp spears to the wonder-blooming aloe.

He left the subject for a happier moment, and, seating himself, opened his hands to warm them by the wood fire, still watching her with that smile, which for its very indulgence, its merry banter, she abhorred.

"You lost your Norse G.o.d as I prophesied?" he asked, carelessly.

He saw her whole face change as with a blow, and her body bend within itself as a young tree bends under a storm.

"He went when you gave him the gold," she said below her breath.

"Of course he went. You would have him set free," he said, with the little low laugh still in his throat. "Did I not say you must dream of nothing else if once you had him freed? You would be full of faith; and unbar your eagle's prison-house, and then, because he took wing through the open door, you wonder still. That is not very wise, Folle-Farine."

"I do not wonder," she said, with fierce effort, stifling her misery.

"He had a right to do as he would: have I said any otherwise?"

"No. You are very faithful still, I see. Yet, I cannot think that you believed my prophecy, or you--a woman--had never been so strong. You think I can tell you of his fate? Nay, on my soul I know nothing. Men do not speak his name. He may be dead;--you shrink? So! can it matter so much? He is dead to you. He is a great man, but he is a fool. Half his genius would give him the fame he wants with much greater swiftness than the whole ever will. The world likes talent, which serves it. It hates genius, which rules it. Men would adore his technical treatment, his pictorial magnificence, his anatomical accuracy; but they will always be in awe of his intensity of meaning, of his marvelous fertility, of his extraordinary mingling of the chillest of idealisms and the most unsparing of sensualities,--but I talk idly. Let us talk of you; see, I chose your likeness, and he let me have it--did you dream that he would part with it so lightly?"

"Why not? He had a million things more beautiful."

He looked at her keenly. He could measure the superb force of this unblenching and mute courage.

"In any other creature such a humility would be hypocrisy. But it is not so in you. Why will you carry yourself as in an enemy's house? Will you not even break your fast with me? Nay, that is sullen, that is barbaric.

Is there nothing that can please you? See here,--all women love these; the gypsy as well as the empress. Hold them a moment."

She took them; old oriental jewels lying loose in an agate cup on a table near; there were among them three great sapphires, which in their way were priceless, from their rare size and their perfect color.

Her mouth laughed with its old scorn. She, who had lost life, soul, earth, heaven, to be consoled with the gla.s.s beads of a bauble! This man seemed to her more foolish than any creature that had ever spoken on her ear.

She looked, then laid them--indifferently--down.

"Three sparrow's eggs are as big, and almost as blue, among the moss in any month of May!"

He moved them away, chagrined.

"How do you intend to live? he asked, dryly.

"It will come as it comes," she answered, with the fatalism and composure that ran in her Eastern blood.

"What have you done up to this moment since you left my house at Rioz?"

She told him, briefly; she wanted to hide that she had suffered aught, or had been in any measure coldly dealt with, and she spoke with the old force of a happier time, seeking rather to show how well it was with her that she should thus be free, and have no law save her own will, and know that none lived who could say to her, "Come hither" or "go there."

Almost she duped him, she was so brave. Not quite. His eyes had read the souls and senses of women for half a century; and none had ever deceived him. As he listened to her he knew well that under her desolation and her solitude her heart was broken--though not her courage.

But he accepted her words as she spoke them. "Perhaps you are wise to take your fate so lightly," he said to her. "But do you know that it is a horrible thing to be alone and penniless and adrift, and without a home or a friend, when one is a woman and young?"

"It is worse when one is a woman and old; but who pities it then?" she said, with the curt and caustic meaning that had first allured him in her.

"And a woman is so soon old!" he added, with as subtle a significance.

She shuddered a little; no female creature that is beautiful and vigorous and young can coldly brook to look straight at the doom of age; death is far less appalling, because death is uncertain, mystical, and may still have beauty.

"What do you intend to do with yourself?" he pursued.

"Intend! It is for the rich 'to intend,' the poor must take what chances."

She spoke calmly, leaning down on one of the cus.h.i.+oned benches by the hearth, resting her chin on her hand; her brown slender feet were crossed one over another, her eyelids were heavy from weakness and the warmth of the room; the soft dim light played on her tenderly; he looked at her with a musing smile.

"No beautiful woman need ever be poor," he said, slowly spreading out the delicate palms of his hands to the fire; "and you are beautiful--exceedingly."

"I know!" She gave a quick gesture of her head, tired, insolent, indifferent; and a terrible darkness stole over her face; what matter how beautiful she might be, she had no beauty in her own sight, for the eyes of Arslan had dwelt on her cold, calm, unmoved, whilst he had said, "I would love you--if I could."

"You know your value," Sartorian said, dryly. "Well, then, why talk of poverty and of your future together? they need never be companions in this world."

She rose and stood before him in the rosy glow of the fire that bathed her limbs until they glowed like jade and porphyry.

"No beautiful woman need be poor--no--no beautiful woman need be honest, I dare say."

He smiled, holding his delicate palms to the warmth of his hearth.

"Your lover drew a grand vision of Barabbas. Well--we choose Barabbas still, just as Jerusalem chose; only now, our Barabbas is most often a woman. Why do you rise? It is a wet day, out there, and, for the spring-time, cold."

"Is it?"

"And you have been ill?"

"So they say."

"You will die of cold and exposure."

"So best."